On the Couch

On the Couch with Louise Bedford: Trading Discipline in a Noisy Market

• Marcus Today

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Welcome to the latest episode of On the Couch.

In this episode, Henry Jennings sits down with trading mentor and author Louise Bedford – always a popular guest, known for her valuable insights into markets and trading mentality.

Louise shares her approach to selling, the importance of discipline, and breaks down what sectors are currently hot – and which ones are ice cold.

She is a behavioural finance expert, bestselling author, and seasoned trader with over 30 years of experience. Louise hosts the Talking Trading podcast and is widely regarded as one of Australia's most compelling voices in financial markets, with six books to her name.


Chapter Markers

  • 0:04 – Welcome And Ground Rules
  • 1:49 – Macro Whip-Around: US Vs Australia
  • 3:21 – Hot And Cold Sectors Revealed
  • 5:01 – Tech's Ice Age And What It Means
  • 7:49 – Small Caps, Resources, Materials Opportunities
  • 8:53 – Chart Signals: Lithium Standouts
  • 10:25 – Managing Big Wins With Thirds
  • 13:10 – Stops, ATRs, And Psychology
  • 15:22 – Love Affairs With Stocks And Objectivity
  • 16:58 – Handling Reporting Season Volatility
  • 19:12 – Overtrading, Plans, And The Inner Lunatic
  • 21:08 – Using AI As A Trading Mirror
  • 23:02 – Agent Mode, Scans, And The Future
  • 25:09 – Final Takeaways: Process And Discipline 


Disclaimer: This is general advice only. It doesn't take your personal circumstances into account. Please speak to a licensed adviser before acting on anything in this episode.

Looking for personal financial advice? Our friends at Clime Investment Management offer tailored advice and financial planning services across most states. Learn more: marcustoday.com.au/about-us/financial-planning-with-clime/

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SPEAKER_02:

Well, welcome to another episode of On the Couch with myself Henry Jennings from Marcus Today. And today I'm delighted to be chatting to an old friend of these podcasts and a very experienced trader, Louise Bedford, the best-selling author of not five, but six books. I was gonna say seven. I'm sure there's another one in the in the wind. But uh thank you, Louise. Uh of course, you are uh known as um the money chick, and you're also a trading mentor to many people. So welcome and thanks for coming on the show. I'm really looking forward to having a chat today.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh Henry, you know I enjoy our stouches. Between the technical analysis perspective and the fundamental perspective, we have got so much to share.

SPEAKER_02:

It is, as the Chinese would say, we are living in interesting times. I think that's that's that's fair fair to say. Um Market's very interesting at the moment. And just before we kick off, I just must uh also put in the disclaimer this is general advice only, so please do your own research. Contact your own financial advisor regarding any of the thoughts or ideas that Louise and I discussed today in this podcast. So welcome Louise. Uh you know, last week was uh epic on on so many fronts. How how do we make sense of what's happening in the markets at the moment? What are the charts telling you? If we cut out all the noise of Davos and Tariff Trump and Taco Man, well, what what's the tr the the underlying chart position telling us about what's happening?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well look, I would like to do a whip around to see what are the hot sectors and what are the cold sectors and what is happening around the world, because I think that gives us a really great macro perspective. Whip away, whip away, here we go. And overlying all of that, we must remember that we have to stay cautiously selective, not broadly optimistic, because what I'm about to deliver here is not necessarily good news.

SPEAKER_02:

Ah, shall we stop the podcast now? I only want the good news, Louise. I don't want any of the bad news. It's it's Tuesday morning after a long weekend, it's only good news week.

SPEAKER_00:

So the opportunity is sitting below the ASX 300, and it is not a stock pickers environment if you're just going to use a blanket strategy. There are clear directions here that we must follow. So I want to start with the US because if we look at the SP 500, this is trading in a beautiful manner. It's only 2.15% volatility. It's trading better in terms of relative strength than the all auds, and it is very, very hot. But usually I would be coming on and saying the NASDAQ is the hottest, but it is not, Henry. We've got 2.84% volatility, but it is underperforming in relation to not only the SP 500 but also the all auds. So that tells us something. We already have a schism between the two major US indices, so we better look a little bit closer locally to make sure we're not going to shoot ourselves in the foot in the coming weeks.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

If we look at the all ords, yes, we are trending beautifully. We're above our moving average, and we only have a 1.76% volatility, which is very low. So there are opportunities you can engage in. The moving average is a good sign that hey, you can trade in this environment. The volatility is low, so my macro is on. So I can enter new positions this week, which is a lovely, lovely thing to be. We're in the hunt, we're active. However, let's drill down. Look at the ASX20, the 100, and the 300. All three of these are cold. What do you make of that, Henry?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I'm a bit disappointed really because I'm I'm a stock picker and a lot of my stocks are going nuts, and we've got BHP at 50 bucks, and it's it's now the biggest company on the Australian stock exchange again. It's just gone past CBA this morning as we're recording this. So, you know, I I I'm pretty, you know, we've seen gold and silver, and perhaps we'll talk about those in a minute. But I I'm pretty positive about things at the moment, selectively.

SPEAKER_00:

Selective is the word. So the areas to be selective in is the three hot sectors: the small ordinaries, small resources, and the ASX 200 materials. They are the three hottest areas in the Australian stock market currently. Energy is in limbo, and everything else is cold.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Okay. Well, that's not good. Well, um, so the opportunities we should be looking at are in those um the small lords, the small resources, and the ASX materials. That that's our happy hunting ground, is it Louise?

SPEAKER_00:

That's it, exactly. And interestingly, as well, if we have a look at information technology in Australia, typically the darling, the one that you love to have in your portfolio because generally that creates the returns, it is following the NASDAQ. So currently, that is the cold, cold, cold sector, currently, which is funny to see because everybody raves about that sector. We need to go back to the charts to make sure that we have a good technical basis for everything that we decide. Because otherwise, we are living in fantasy. It is a myth that we are thinking that we're wise when we're not actually looking at the data to make the decisions. So all of this is available if you want to check this out further. Henry, is it's at tradinggame.com.au slash hot or not. I've produced a hot or not report just for your listeners. Tradinggame.com.au slash hot or not. You can get the full sector analysis there.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow. Well, that's that's that's a massive bonus. It's like the rest of this history. We're getting, you know, bonus things for for restless history club members. It's quite extraordinary. Well I I think it's fair to say, Louise, that our ASX IT sector and the tech sector here is not only cold, it's going through an ice age. It it's it's just extraordinary how far the likes of Zero, Wise Tech, I mean Life 360 had a big bounce the other day, but still it's been under serious pressure. Technology one, you know, you name it, it it's been awful. Is there any can you see any respite there to come out of the ice age and and and have a little bit of heat?

SPEAKER_00:

Not yet, not yet at all. We are just below a significant area of support. Now that support was punched in early 2025, and we have dropped through on a long red candle on a weekly chart, which is closing at or near its low. So there is very little hope for this sector over the next week or two. I can't speak longer term. Generally, I do feel with candles they have a three to ten period action phase that you can trust the candle and you can move on the candle based on what it is telling you for the next three to ten periods. After that, I don't try to throw that dart into the wind and guess.

SPEAKER_02:

So, so when you're looking at uh okay, we'll forget tech and IT, that's that's ice age stuff. Um when we look at the the small lords resources and and and materials, are there any stocks out there that stand out and you think, ooh, yeah, this is this is opportunity knocks. This is this is these are these are the stocks that I'd like to own for the next week or so.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, there are a few actually. Let me just call up my list while we're talking about that to give you a couple of ones to have a look at. You know the interesting thing with this, Henry, as well, is with all of these ideas, we need to check the chart for ourselves. Because with ones like FRS, which is Forestania Resources, that has got a beautiful trend and it's going up, it's got that lovely base formation, and we know the base formation. If we look at the measure all, it says that the length of the base, when you flip it on its side, is likely to be the height of the rise. So, how far has this gone and is it too far? Because roughly the length of the base is matching the rise at this stage. So, you do have to follow your own trading plan for this. But there were two beautiful ones that came up on the weekend Delta lithium, that has got a lovely long base. We have got a breakthrough of line of resistance on heavy relative volume, where we now have on a weekly chart a candle that is completely above that resistance line. That resistance line is very significant too because it's a change of polarity line, it goes back past the level of support which became resistance, and now we've got a breakthrough interesting to watch. And the other one is gallon lithium GLN. Also a beautiful signal, came up on my scan, looking great, and heck, wouldn't you know it? I have got both. So that is my disclaimer for this episode.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's always good to um to back your own uh research, I guess. Indeed. I think that's cool, putting your money where your mouth is.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, and also knowing that none of these are foolproof. We need to make sure that we have our stops in place, that we have our entry, our exit, and our position sizing written out so clearly that another trader could follow it.

SPEAKER_02:

That's interesting, isn't it? Another trader could follow it. I don't think uh anyone could follow my logic. Or or uh I struggle to follow my logic, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00:

You're a mad genius, my friend.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm not a mad genius, I'm just but um interestingly, um when we look at um you know what's going on in commodities markets, gold and silver, they they're going absolutely bananas, although we did we did see a big spike uh in the last day or so and it and it's come off. Um both of those have come off a lot. Uh do you see more upside in in gold and more upside in silver, or are we starting to get to the point where we're kind of getting, I don't know, a little bit tired of the whole um of the whole rally in these precious metals?

SPEAKER_00:

Do you know? I never know how long these trends are going to last. I just put my stop in and then go, hey, if it hasn't hit my stop, the trend is still continuing. But what I wanted to talk about is a way for us to be able to handle when we're in a very large position, because that will be impacting some of your traders. They will have a position, particularly in silver, I mean, let's face it, where we have hit complete all-time highs, and you start to get that niggly feeling like, uh oh, what if it rolls over? And I'm sitting on squillows of profit. So, should we talk about that, Henry? A method to be able to handle a large windfall.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I I know how I'd handle a large windfall. I'd go straight to the Porsche garage or go and buy a boat.

SPEAKER_00:

Um that's assuming you've shut it out.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, yeah, well, as soon as I get to the the the uh the the ticket price, I'm out. But let's um let's um be more serious and yeah, let's talk about how to handle large positions and large wins, I guess, and trying to lock in some of those large wins.

SPEAKER_00:

That's exactly right. Now, what I would suggest that you can do, and this is certainly something that you'll need to play with and see if it suits you, is to look at firstly breaking this into thirds with three different strategies. This is actually something that I haven't shared, Henry, so thanks for giving me the platform to be able to do this. So the first third is where you sell it out as a windfall profit. Now, how do I define a windfall profit? This is where you look at the previous prevailing high, so it's gone up and it's gone down, and that's your anchor point, and then you go up for ATR. So ATR is average true range. Now that gives us an idea about how far it goes up or down in a particular period. If you say four times the average amount that it goes up or down in a particular period, and it hasn't reversed, so you've got a ballistic, an exponential rise, then I would suggest that you could implement a windfall profit, which means remove one third of the position. So we've still got two-thirds to play with though, but how how does that sit with you so far?

SPEAKER_02:

Um, Louise, I'm a uh I'm an old options trader from uh from way back. So as stocks go up, the delta increases, so you get longer and longer in your position. So I'm always happy to take profits along the way. So that kind of fits in, you know, if if something goes up by something doubles, I will sell half of it and then I'm running the rest for free.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. You've got free carry, and that's what I'm suggesting here too. But it also lightens the load emotionally because if you have got a ballistic move, often the angle of the incline will match the angle of the decline. So that which goes straight up can come straight back down. And acknowledging that and realizing that you can actually remove some of that position to give the rest of the position some breathing space. So, should we talk about the other two-thirds?

SPEAKER_02:

Um, yeah, it's interesting when you talk about that. You know, what goes up must come down. And you know, I always find um if something's gone up a lot and you fail to sell any, um even a third, and then it comes all the way back down, you just seem to be crushed psychologically, and you start blaming yourself. Oh, I missed it, you know, whatever. And then you run into the problem that you might do something silly, and it has another leg down again, and you sell it out, and then the next minute, you know, it hits it hits a mother load of gold or bonanza grades, and you know, it doubles, and you then you're even more upset with yourself. So I think your discipline is great. Keep going, keep going. Let's get on to the rest.

SPEAKER_00:

So the next third you can manage with a tighter stop. Now, by a tighter stop, I'm meaning a three to a five weekly ATR stop. So it's not tight, tight, you're not following that price action up directly behind it, you're still giving it room to move because with a runaway, this could be a life-changing fortune. This could be something that could alter the trajectory of your trading and your entire world. So we don't want to jam a stock right up under the price action because otherwise, we're not giving that stock or the ATF position or the index position room to move. We need to give it a little bit of room, and that room tends to hit a sweet spot around three to five ATR for removing one third. So you've given it a chance with being able to come down a little bit and find support. If it hasn't found support and it looks like it's going to bust right back down, then you're removing that second third.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. I I have to say that that does resonate. I had an email that even this morning, I know this is coming about um a guy that had followed um one of the stocks I'd recommended and it had changed his he'd paid off his mortgage. He had he had a he had a massive, uh I assume a massive go, or uh maybe not a very big mortgage. But it you know, it it it was a it was a life-changing um decision that he made now. You know, I I recommend lots of stocks, some good, some bad, but you know, he had the um the courage to uh to follow this particular recommendation and obviously sized his uh position appropriately and risk managed, I guess. So, you know, he's he's a very happy regiment. I think we've got him as a member for a while now.

SPEAKER_00:

I think so. Once you uh have that type of impact on somebody's portfolio, yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is that I'm gonna do the last words, yeah. Yes, one left. Now, with this, and this will rub some people up against the grain. I'm suggesting a 10 ATR stop. Now, why so wide? You have already had a massive gain, you have already had an outlier. This is not something that requires the usual type of management. This requires really finessing our management to get the most out of this trade. So you still want a dog in the fight here. If silver continues to go up and up, if gold continues to go up and up, you'll be so annoyed that you sold out completely. You really will. So this is a way that you are suggesting a complete change of primary trend before you exit the complete position. Now you may never get to that 10 ATR, and if that's the case, you've still sold some of that position, if it's come down a little bit or on win for profit, so that you have some living expenses, maybe a trip to Europe, maybe that extra little house for the kids, who knows? I don't know how big your position was. All of that is possible, but this is the management of the professional trader. We look at best case, we look at worst case, we look at most likely case, and we find something that we can live with, a sweet spot in those scenarios.

SPEAKER_02:

Great advice. Um I was going to ask you as well, you know, with this one-third, one-third, one-third strategy, which which makes a lot of sense, especially to an old option trader like me. Is there a point um that you start to look to get back in if it's if it's pulled back? Or is it, you know, you you kind of you're out, um you take your third, you take your third, then the stock goes off, and then you just forget about it, or or do you keep that stock on your watch list? Did you I guess do you go back into the lion's cage and get your hat?

SPEAKER_00:

You definitely do go back in. Now, the key with this is to have a short memory.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. That suits me. I'm I'm getting old. My memory is getting shorter and shorter.

SPEAKER_00:

So let me tell you uh a little bit about my personal life, Henry. I'm about to confide in you, and the here is my love story. It's with me and West Farmers. Oh, West Farmers whined me, it dined me, it just took me to the most incredible places. It was such an optimistic light in my life. And then it jilted me and it stomped on my heart, and it is now written into my trading plan that I'm never ever ever allowed to trade that because I'm too emotionally enmeshed with that particular share that clearly my objectivity is out of the window. Now that was the last share that I was in love with, and that was quite a long time ago. But ooh, it still gives me a little bit of a tick now and again. I can feel my shoulder jerk when I'm talking about it. So you don't want to get so involved with the shares that you become like me in a love affair with a particular share that has started to mentally abuse you. So the idea is that we forget that which we are involved with, and then we start a Every relationship with that particular share, or the ETF, or the index, whatever that instrument is, you start that afresh so that you are objective and you can see it on its own merit.

SPEAKER_02:

It's like starting a love story on um whatever one of the apps is from a fresh. Hell hath no fury like a trader scorned. It's interesting, isn't it? I mean, I've I've had love affairs with stocks for uh I've had a love affair with one stock for over nearly 30 years. Um I wouldn't say it's it's actually a love affair, but um the stock is Silex, and many many members will um will know about my my tortured story in Silex, but I have to say it has been good for me having bought it at 35 cents and sold most of them at 12 12 bucks, and now I've got a few left which I just look at and think, oh maybe maybe one day I should sell them. Maybe not. Maybe they get the 12 bucks again, and you think, yeah, but yeah, that's been a 30-year love affair for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm hearing you. Yeah, would you ever write it into your trading plan that you're not allowed to trade it, or is it just too much of an addiction?

SPEAKER_02:

Um I don't really trade it, I just hold it. It's just kind of like a it's just like have carrying a torch for an old love. It's not so much getting on the app and swiping right or swiping left. It's just kind of it's it's just there in the background and it's been an old love and it it treated me well. And um I f I feel I feel you know, I feel dishonest and and and slightly um nasty if I was to jilt it and and sell it. I think that would that would be disloyal somehow. So this is fantastic stuff, great, great stuff in terms of trading plans. How does how do you handle what is potentially going to be a massively volatile season again? Because you know, we saw last August with reporting season, it was crazy. I've I've I've never seen anything like it. And we're heading into uh to February and everybody's you know looking at reporting season again. How do you handle that kind of volatility? Do you do you just kind of have wider stops or do you just not play, or do you wait for dust to settle? How how do you best handle that extreme volatility in the reporting season?

SPEAKER_00:

Let's talk about the play-not play rule first because I think that that is a real key.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I have coined a term the volatility bias. Okay, traders often think it's much more volatile than it actually is. So one of the ways to measure volatility is to look at the average true range of the index and then create that as a percentage. So if you know that it's going up or down by 2% as an index, then is that volatile or isn't it? And you can look back over time, and I can tell you my rule. My rule is 5%. If things are going up or down by 5% for the index, not for the share, that's really important. That is where my go-no-go rule comes into play. So over 5%, I am not entering into new positions. I'm just not because it is too slippery, things can blow past your stop, things can be very difficult to get a good fill, and you can also feel that upgrade in adrenaline in your system, which means that we really suppress objectivity. So that 5% is sacrosanct to me. Now I know that it can feel on an individual's basis and particularly a portfolio basis that it can feel like it is volatile, and I do understand that. But if we look objectively, the indexes rarely get past 5%, very rarely. So it is business as usual for me unless it is over 5%. If it is over 5%, then I stop out of my positions where my stop is calling me to get out. I stay in the positions that are currently going and that they haven't hit their stop. And also, Henry, and I know this is controversial, but if I have pyramid points that are hit for those positions that are working, I pyramid even though my macro is off, even though the volatility is too high for new positions, I will pyramid. Some of these pocket rockets, they didn't look at the index, they just decided to follow their own playbook. So I still honour my position with its buy signals, with its sell signals, but I use that macro to overlay the whole idea of the environment. Do I trade or do I not trade?

SPEAKER_02:

I I I think that's for me, I think that's the important thing, isn't it? I think it's very it's vital to know when the coast is clear and to not trade just for the sake of it. Um, you know, I I I ran a big principal book at Macquarie for for years, and you know, I had a couple of guys that work for me, and they came up with four great ideas a year. I mean, really great ideas, I mean absolute knock them out the park ideas. And they they probably came up with ten rubbishy ones, but we we had the discipline mostly to to follow the four that were really good. But I think you know because the market's so gamified these days, and then there's so many tools out there, and there's so many people and so much noise, um, trying to get you to trade because that's what makes the world go around, commission, uh and fees. Is there a danger that you overtrade and and that you you don't read the the the tea leaves in terms of when it when to play or not to play? Is that something that you see in traders?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, absolutely. I think we are all heroes of our own narrative. We like to think that we are Warren Buffett, we are the Wolf on Wall Street, and then when things go bad, we don't want to look at our positions, we banish them because it is too painful. And this bag of emotions that we walk around the world in, it is very difficult to stay on the straight and narrow. And the only way to do it is to follow a written trading plan. Now, my written trading plan has definite rules for entry, exit, and position sizing. And without those rules written down, I am some sort of crazy woman. Henry, I've got this thing called an inner lunatic. I don't know, maybe you have too. My inner lunatic looks like one of those wavy blow-up things outside the front of a car yard. Yeah, yeah. And it waves its arms around in the wind, it's totally subject to the environment. My inner lunatic, she's bright and colourful and she's kind of fun, but she also speaks like this. Okay, now that inner lunatic, she can't be allowed to take control of my trading. My only combat is my trading plan. So my trading plan you can pick up from tradinggame.com.au. I give it away for free. My trading plan template to show you what to put into your own trading plan so that you can control your own inner lunatic and cover the things that you need to cover to be an exceptional trader. So I think we're always combating our own psyche, our own awareness of volatility, and also our awareness of the news. We watch too much news and we take it on board, and it scares us out of positions and it stops us from being that clear, calm, objective trader that we know we have inside us.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I've got I've got plenty of inner lunatic, and sometimes it becomes an outer lunatic. Very scary. It's um it's interesting, isn't it, Louise? The the the rise of AI. Um, do you use any AI in your in the in your analysis these days? Is this starting to creep into your analysis um in terms of process and scans?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, look, I love AI. I love AI. I just think we are in such an amazing fulcrum of the Cesaw time in the world. But I have to say, the real risk in terms of AI, because a lot of people are saying, Oh, well, how do we invest in AI stocks? How do we know which one's going to be the one to go the different the distance? But the real risk isn't AI itself, it's crowd behaviour. So late entry, poor risk making, poor control. Not every AI termed company will be a winner, and you do have to watch for that too, because you don't know what percentage of their company is in AI because it's become the catchphrase. So we have to be really careful about what's behind that term rather than just the PR. So on a personal level though, I do think traders need to use AI. AI use it as a mirror, not a crystal ball. I don't use it for stock selection, but I definitely use it for analysing my own behavior. So turning your trading journal into data rather than diary entries can be the most effective thing you can ever do as a trader. Traders to excel require a heck of a lot of introspection. We have to be our own course corrector where we don't have that KPI from a boss. We don't have somebody breathing down our shoulder for accountability. So we have to look within and see where we can improve our own methods. So if you can feed into your Chat GPT or your Gemini or whatever AI tool you want to use, feed your data into that AI and then ask it to look for patterns. Ask it to find areas that you can improve, ask it for your strengths and your weaknesses. It can highlight recurring mistakes, it can highlight decision biases, and you can work on them and see a complete change to your equity curve based on its feedback to you.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow. I haven't even thought of that.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a winner. You'd love it.

SPEAKER_02:

I I'm loving to, I'm going to be psychoanalysed by a computer. Fantastic. It was interesting. I I did a podcast last week with uh fund manager that has incorporated a huge amount of AI into their um into their business and and they built their own AI engine which basically searches out, I think it was 173 news sources every day and constantly looking for ideas basically. And that's in you know, we're not talking just Bloomberg, etc., and Reuters, but we're all the weird and wonderful ones in in weird and wonderful languages as well. A multilingual AI tool that is this this you know, it's this massive funnel that's bringing in these ideas for the fund, and and they've done extraordinarily well out of it. She's um yeah, she's a very impressive young lady.

SPEAKER_00:

But so they're looking at fundamental information with that?

SPEAKER_02:

They are, they are yes.

SPEAKER_00:

So the equivalent for a technical analyst is a scan. So we type in an algorithm, we ask the computer to derive benefits of high probability trades because the computing power is so much easier than us going through one by one. But I do have a future prediction for you, Henry, if you want to.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah, we're a world first bonus episode with all this free stuff, websites, predictions. I mean, where does it end, Louise? Where does it end?

SPEAKER_00:

Have you heard of agent mode in AI?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I have, yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, so agent mode is fascinating. So for the listener at home, if you'd like to explore, you can explore using on Chat GPT the plus symbol in where the prompt is usually typed, and then you can put it into agent mode. Now, agent mode is capable of being like a personal assistant. So you can say, Can you do this task for me and send me an email on Monday morning at 9 a.m. giving me this? Now, my hit prediction is that agent mode is going to improve and become more refined and more specific, and eventually we will be able to use agent mode to detect high probability trades. Now, it's not there yet, but I am so excited about the future with that, and I'm very much looking forward to being able to train my AI to produce the trades that I want.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you have a name for your AI?

SPEAKER_00:

I do. I do.

SPEAKER_02:

What'd you call it?

SPEAKER_00:

Look, I started out by calling it a nickname, Snooky, but then I decided no, it's too intimate. What I want is Atlas. So Atlas is carrying the weight of the world on its shoulders.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, it does. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

I call my AI HAL after the computer in in space in space.

SPEAKER_00:

Open the pod bay doors, hell, yes.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that. You know, you know what's scary, and this scared the the the bejeebas out of me. That Stanley Kubrick made that movie in 1968.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

That that just I you know I thought about late 70s, something like that, but 1968. That that's just extraordinary. Now, Louise, you've given us so much. We're coming to towards the end. What would you like to leave us with in your final sort of summation for listeners around the world?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, firstly, I want you to double down on process, not prediction. Focus on repeatable rules, risk control and execution. Stay selective and be patient. 2026 is unlikely to reward rushing in or broad exposure. You're gonna have to concentrate your focus onto a fewer, higher quality of trades with clear risk limits. Otherwise, you're not going to outperform that index. And if that's the case, then what in the heck do we have business calling ourselves a trader? We need to outperform that index as our base way of telling ourselves that we've done well. And thirdly, invest in self-trust and structure. Now the edge comes from knowing exactly what to do when pressure hits. A written trading plan, clean data on your results, disciplined review. That will all separate progress from frustration. And the easiest way to do that is to get it on paper. Don't commit your trading plan to your thoughts or your idea of the moment or even a message that Henry and I are delivering today. You need to check everything we have said according to your own screening and make sure that trading plan is a hundred percent robust. Test it in a variety of different circumstances. Do this over time and keep track of where you are at. And you can get my trading template for free. So I've mentioned tradinggame.com.au. So if you haven't got one, you have to do that because you owe it to yourself to become disciplined, focused, and to make this year the best trading year that you have ever experienced.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow. That that that's some powerful thoughts there to finish up our podcast. So thank you so much, Louise, for coming on today. As always, you've been just brilliant. You know, it's it's fantastic. I I I wish I was more disciplined. I'm not very disciplined, I'm afraid. I can't I get distracted easily. But I'm gonna I'm gonna take on board some of these things because I know it's gonna make me better at what I do and better for um for our members and for for me getting to that um that showroom. Um maybe buying a new one.

SPEAKER_00:

Um Henry, you are my favourite fundamental analyst. I love your show. I love what you do for your trading community, and I do appreciate our friendship as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, check in the post. That that's uh there'll be um there'll be something in the post for you, Louise. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for uh for coming on today. Really enjoyed having you as always. Plenty there for uh listeners to get their teeth into and plenty of free stuff as well. So uh check out the um the Louise's website, of course, and all those wonderful links that she's uh she's given you uh in this podcast. So thank you once again, Louise, and all the best for 2026. Let's hope it's um another good one.

SPEAKER_00:

Indeed, onwards and upwards.

SPEAKER_02:

Onwards and upwards, exactly. Thank you so much.